A new Pacific submarine fibre optic cable is being proposed by a company called Hawaiki Submarine Cable that would link New Zealand and Australia with several Pacific islands by the end of 2014.
According to Hawaiki's website, the proposal is for a repeatered two fibre pairs submarine cable system with a design capacity of 8Tbps linking Auckland, Sydney and Hawaii. A branching unit would connect Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Wallis, Samoa and American Samoa to the Hawaiki backbone.
Hawaiki chief executive Remi Galasso, a former Alcatel Lucent executive, was behind another project that proposed a similar cable system around three years ago -- about the time that the failed Pacific Fibre project was launched.
That project, called SPIN, was to link Auckland to Noumea and Tahiti and have branching units for Norfolk Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa and American Samoa.
SPIN was to be connected to other Pacific cables, such as the Honotua cable link Tahiti to Hawaii.